OSXFACTOR  Still no color picker. Bummer.  
(Version 1.0.7)

SHMK  I have already written a few comments but I now have to give it a low rating for the absolute lack of communication on the part of the developers. Also, as it turns out they are students and develop when they have the time. How can they justify the price tag when the initial release was beta quality at best and then go months and months without development and worse yet no communication about what was going on. Lame.

I love CSSEdit but these guys really stuffed up on this one I went from MacRabbit lover to wanting to skin it and put it in a stew and I am a vegetarian!!  
(Version 1.0.6)

ISCREEN  Plz correct the d/l link then, delete this post (as usual):

10.5 (here)

http://www.macupdate.com/download.php/30094/Espresso%201.0.5.dmg

10.6 (here)

http://macrabbit.com/espresso/get/

TKKS  
(Version 1.0.6)

OSXFACTOR  So, even at version 1.06, Espresso has no way to select a color. The color picker is no where to be found. If guess they want you to use CSSEdit.

This app has a lot of promise, but stuff like the issue above, and the inability to setup an address for previewing of live server side files like PHP & RoR, make this app hard to live with for server side web development.   
(Version 1.0.6)

WEAVIE  The main plus with Espresso is the Live Preview feature. It took a while to figure out how to use it (hint: Drag files from Workspace to their own window), but now that I have I can truly get to work. I almost spent a few hundred on Adobe DW (even though I can't stand it) just for this feature. Coding is very easy if you are experienced in a particular language, but I wish they had the optional properties section like in Css Edit for my lazier days and plus to make codes I'm not that familiar with easier to code. The smart codesense and snippets are great though. You can manage a whole site in a slim and trim application. Just what I bought it for!!  
(Version 1.0.5)

VERYVITO  Alpha quality at best.

I used the promising beta and looked forward to this app. Unfortunately, between the beta and the time I forked out the money for the final (and indeed, even to this day), very little has changed: The "final" app works no better than the pre-release versions. Worse yet, the developers seem to be ignoring the diminishing cries of what could have been a loyal user base.

A shame really, as MacRabbit had a loyal fan base left over from its CSSEdit work. In fact, if any other company had pulled this, I'm sure the uproar would have been huge. Instead, I feel most users tried to give the developers a break -- but for this price, such patience can only last so long.

If the app were free, one might expect such abandonware, but for $80?

I generally don't care about customer support when it comes to buying software (I use it and that's that), but when the software is sold as a relatively high-priced programmer's editor and turns out to be broken and pretty much unusable for anything beyond simple text editing, I think paying customers deserve an explanation.  
(Version 1.0.5)

XPLICIT  Complicated workflow, automatic code insertion flawed, uploading doesn't work. Tried the same stuff in Coda ... voila, done.  
(Version 1.0.5)

DAN WEB DEVER  The Bad points.

• This program has had very little updates and is a regular crasher, even on the latest update as I write this (1.0.5) and inconveniently has a pop-up window saying it has an error and asks you if you want to report or ignore it (this happens a lot, not nice when you're working) and there should be at least a "Don't display this again for this version" check box as it is supposedly out of Alpha and Beta and Release Candidate (seems to me like its still in the alpha stage really).

• The snippets Panel, although it looks nice, has a nice quick access and has potential, it is somewhat disorganised and can look quite messy when (if you're like me) write a lot of mini scripts and put them in the snippets panel for regular use.

• Live preview is not always live and has issues multiple when you're editing the CSS (it DOESNT always DISPLAY IT) until you close the CSS from your workspace.

Also, as other reviewers have mentioned it needs relative paths to work, quite a pain really.

• The programs features don't live up to the standard they claim to be on the developers site.

The Good Points

• Fast - this program is quite powerful and lightweight, it doesn't eat away at your system resources like most standard IDE's but has a lot of the power to compete.

• The Interface is Clean, Simple (yet stylish) and Effective. Things aren't all over the place, in your face or in the way of your workspace, They're there when you need them and hidden when they're just not needed and therefore providing you with more space for to develop and code.

• The Code navigator is wonderful, In my opinion its one of the best code navigators out there. Each tag, element, variable has its own simple icon so you can at a glance browse though it without having to read everything, also it shows you in a nice way how things are nested and highlighting things are easy just by clicking on them in the Navigator.

• Quick Publish. It is exactly what it says, just by turning it on, whenever you save your file locally it'll upload / update your file remotely via FTP, Extra handy when working with files locally and remotely.

• Espresso's FTP is surprisingly fast and when working on a large project (or even a small one), its merge / update features are especially handy.

Basic Missing Features

• Matching Brace Highlighting - One thing in Espresso that really shocked and horrified me when I first opened it was the missing Matching Brace Highlighting feature. Although its not a necessary feature, its a highly sought after (and handy) one and is very common even among the freeware coding applications, eg Smultron, TextWrangler and Komodo Edit.

• Although Espresso has the handy feature of Syntax Checking for PHP (letting you know what line / error it is), you have to manually check though the contextual menu. Just something simple as a little red icon in the toolbar or a red underline on the line that has the error would definitely make this app quite special.

(p.s. this Awesome feature is available in NetBeans [which is an amazingly powerful Free IDE] if anyone wants to know of an app that did that).

Although this app is somewhat in the early stages of its life and its functionality / stability is somewhat funky and the pricetag is somewhat high for what it currently provides, it has some great potential to be a competitor in the Web IDE market.  
(Version 1.0.5)

MX  I got this with MacHeist, but I can't recommend it over Coda, which I paid full price for. As others have commented, the 1.0.x versions are just the bare minimum for site development.

Deal breaker for me: links have to be relative for the previews to work; absolute paths from the root directory are not understood even in Project view. If Espresso knows the root directory of my Project, why can't it figure out that links beginning with "/" refer to this root?

This needs to be fixed before I can consider trying out whatever other great features are touted by the developer. Without being able to properly preview my pages, there's no point going further. And there's no way I'm changing all the links to relative paths just to use in Espresso.

[I've been developing with Dreamweaver for 7 years. I don't expect Coda or Espresso to be as robust as DW, but this is a bare minimum feature as fas as I'm concerned.]  
(Version 1.0.5)

SUM1  Un-user-friendly. Complicated work flow and lousy naming for additions.   
(Version 1.0.5)

JDUB800  I am also a huge fan of CSSEdit, but am a little bewildered by Espresso's lack of integration with it. This should be the number one priority IMHO. It does have some nice features, but having use a separate CSS app, when the frameworks already exists by the same author, is a little strange... :/  
(Version 1.0.3)

SHMK  I want to love this app, I am a huge fan of CSSEdit but Espresso has left me wanting at the moment, feels incomplete and doesn't actually help my work flow. I have SKEdit as well and it seems to keep me working faster than Espresso. I got it with the latest MH bundle but I think I will be saving my money for Coda.  
(Version 1.0.2)

PEDRO FARDILHA  Espresso is a decent IDE, but definitely needs to be further polished.

As already mentioned here, it's as if MacRabbit (Espresso devs) are so worried not to clash with their other main app, CSSEdit, that they "forget" to add some usefull option on Espresso.

Probably the major absence is a visual CSS editor, as so I can not call this "one focused app".

I truly hope that they add some sort of CSS editor still on 1.x version otherwise my license will end up being a waste of money. (I barely started using it and already find myself constantly jumping to other apps to complement what I can't do here. If I keep doing this for to long I might as well go straight to those other apps)  
(Version 1.0.1)

JOEYA  Espresso has a ton of potential but it's not there just yet. Sure it's fast, lightweight and extensible but it's also unfinished. Marquee features such as Live Preview simply don't work as advertised. The MacRabbit website claims, "Espresso offers real-time styling of absolutely any web page. Even when your site or application is powered by a complex database..." However in practice Live Preview only works on static HMTL and Espresso doesn't support local servers at all.

Add in things like the lack of visual CSS editing, the missing X-Ray functionality and little things like code snippets not wrapping around selections, the unusual tab workflow and windows not remembering their settings and the entire experience feels rough around the edges. Clearly 1.0 was rushed to market.

The good news is virtually all of these issues can easily be resolved in time and for the most part you can work around them until a fix comes along. The bad news is no one knows when the fixes will come. Virtually all of these same exact problems existed during the betas and in many cases MacRabbit did nothing about it. In most cases they didn't even respond to feedback.

Nevertheless, I'm hopeful. CSSEdit is fantastic so I'm confident these guys can put together a killer app. I just think they need a lot more time to do it.  
(Version 1.0.1)

SHAAHIN  Well made webdesign tool, simple & practical. Thanks MacRabbit!  
(Version 1.0.1)

SEAN M.  Excellent development tool, pretty stable and light, just needs a cool visual div editor.  
(Version 1.0.1)

VELGOR242  I really like the interface, but as syntax checking is completely broken, I can't recommend this application to anyone.  
(Version 1.0.1)

ANG  Navigator + autocompletion are great...

But hey, 81,99 $ just for this ?

Don't you know the escellent Smultron ?

Please mr developper of the beautifull and best css editor CSSEDIT...

Just add a pro version of your espresso for having Cssedit functionnalities integrated (just like coda)...

And what about giving more "wysiwyg" functions for the espresso part like "color picker", "add table", (just like the SEEdit Maxi editor toolbox) ?  
(Version 1.0.1)

JOELLEVIN  Espresso has surprised me. I was initially largely unimpressed with it, as it seems to not have a lot of actual features. Coming from developing with Coda, it felt nearly useless.

However, I recently built a website exclusively with Espresso (as a good test of the software) and it was a pleasure. It doesn't have a ton of features, but it also does a good job of staying out of your way. Also, the merging features are really fantastic. It's almost like having a very unintrusive and clean SCM for development and publishing.

It leaves a little to be desired, but considering that it hasn't yet had a major update yet, I'd say it's pretty damn useful as it is. I look forward to using it for future web development.  
(Version 1.0.1)

MACD  Yeah.. figures.

Guess they never expected to be able to sell it for the ridiculous 80 bucks anyway, let alone make the software polished to be able to actually sell it without any promotions. Sad. That sort of confirms that there's nothing to expect from Espresso in observable future (till the next full upgrade)

Oh well anyways, that's how business goes. No usable software - no money. Having said that, I really doubt I would even buy Espresso in its current stage for 4 bucks (that's around how much each software in the package sells for, if you equally divide the total price).

Don't know why I spend my time writing it. Just probably because I really looked forward for the polished release.  
(Version 1.0)

MACD  I am as well very surprised to see the software is actually released at this point.

It is very barren, sugars management is absolute PITA. As in - go to some github site, click download button, download the latest version.. and.. what to do next? Double click the sugar and it opens as a new project!! Guess I have to put it to some magic folder or something?

There's a menu called Help ("No help is available for Espresso"), and there's Wiki - I couldn't find a way to install sugars, anyway.

There's no shortcut for searching for files inside a project.

The app looks totally barren and definitely rushed out for reasons unknown.

It does look good, and there's a chance that I could use it for some of my projects. May be. In the future. Probably a distant one. But at its current incarnation, and at that price tag (come on! 80 bucks for THAT??) it is not going anywhere.. 80 bucks is OmniFocus, for example - and it provides vastly greater and deeper experience, targeting almost the same (in percentage of users) niche as Espresso shoots for.

And honestly, it's a big shame, because I own and a big fan of CSSEdit and was definitely expecting much, much better experience from MacRabbit's new app.. Oh well, back to TextMate/BBEdit/CSSEdit combo I guess.

Big "boo" to the developer for a release like that!  
(Version 1.0)

THEODORE LEE  I'm really surprised to see this out of beta. The app just feels unfinished to me. I had very high hopes for Espresso (still do, actually), but this 1.0 release feels more like a 0.90. MacRabbit gets some fundamentals right, like the Code Folding and the Intellisense auto-complete, which seem much better than Coda's. But the way the app handles "tabs", which aren't really tabs, but items in a list in the "workspace", and "previews" seems unfinished, UI wise.

I'm hoping they work the kinks out quickly and provide some good competition in this space. But I'm afraid that the high rate of the Euro to the dollar means that I'll be sticking with Coda for a good long while.   
(Version 1.0)

DNELSON  Very good editor, but I still like skEdit better. Also, skEdit is cheaper...

I love MacRabbit's products, especially CSSEdit. As for Espresso, just lower the price and add more features!  
(Version 1.0)

SHANE C SMITH  I would have thought cssedit would have been built into it and maybe discontinuing cssedit.  
(Version 1.0b4)

MORPE  wow!

great app... i wait for PHP support!!  
(Version 1.0b4)

JOEYA  I agree, it's far too early to review Espresso. Although a proper beta was supposed to be released in November of last year, development has been delayed repeatedly and the current beta probably isn't a good reflection of the final feature set.

That said from what I have seen so far, Espresso seems to target the developer crowd more so than the designer crowd. Through the implementation of sugars, there's a broad upcoming support of languages while design-oriented features such as visual CSS editing (arguably what MacRabbit, the makers of CSSEdit, are best known for) is suspiciously absent.

To be clear, Espresso seems to compliment CSSEdit instead of replacing it. Therefore, in my opinion it's more of a TextMate competitor than a Coda one -despite what MacRabbit's marketing indicates. As such, for those of us currently using (insert your editor here) plus CSSEdit, Espresso doesn't doesn't really offer any advantages - not just yet anyway.  
(Version 1.0b3)

GEORGE THE FLEA  I don't know why this is listed on MacUpdate; Espresso is not really in a state yet where it's ready for any but the curious and those who want to develop Sugars. Although the current beta should give you a basic feel for the core features, I would not recommend evaluating it yet as a possible replacement for your current text editor.

Please note that you'll also need to install several Sugars if you want to try it out successfully. Another commenter's problems with PHP files were because at this point in the beta Espresso only ships with definitions for HTML/XML, CSS, and Javascript. I imagine once core sugars like the PHP one are mature, they'll be bundled with Espresso, but right now everything (program and Sugars alike) are very much in beta.  
(Version 1.0b3)

GREGORGY  I can't quite review this just yet but I will say, for the price, there isn't anything to drag me away from BBEdit. I understand it is still in beta but when I open a page that is PHP and HTML, it sees the PHP opening statement as an error (  
(Version 1.0b2)